RESIDENT EVIL(2002)
THE LASER CHAMBER
The series’ first film introduces Alice (Milla
Jovovich), a woman who wakes up with
amnesia, and the Hive, a booby-trapped
genetic research facility. In this scene, a
SWAT team enters the latter in an attempt to
shut down rogue computer the Red Queen.
Cue panic, decapitation and Colin Salmon
diced into human Jenga blocks by lasers...
Paul W.S. Anderson (director):I’m obsessed
with Lewis Carroll. Back in 2000, I was toying
with adapting a video game calledAmerican
McGee’s Alicebut it had already been optioned.
SoResident Evilturned into my version ofAlice
In Wonderland. The central character’s called
Alice, she enters the Hive through a looking
glass, and the computer, the Red Queen, has a
thing for chopping off people’s heads — hence
the laser-chamber decapitations.
Jeremy Bolt (producer):The sequence was our
take on the sentient laser grid in Vincenzo
Natali’sCube. That was a sci-i horror with an
art-house sensibility, and a biginluence —
people forget the originalResiwasn’t a
Hollywood ilm. It was a UK/German co-
production, with a pretty modest budget.
Anderson:Visually, the key inspiration was Peter
Greenaway — his ilms always deliver lush,
painterly images on a shoestring. He proved you
can make great-looking movies for very little
money. The effects are by Richard Yuricich, who
designed the opening shots inBlade Runner.
Nothing dates faster than cutting-edge CGI, so
90 per cent of that sequence is practical FX. He
built a full-scale Colin Salmon model out of
prosthetic cubes with rods going into them. You
pull the rods and the body falls apart.
Milla Jovovich (‘Alice’):Watching that model
of Colin getting diced was unbelievably gross!
There was a sense on set that we were making
a classic scene. Alice witnesses the massacre
from outside the chamber. It’s almost like
a premonition — she has to survive the chamber
herself in later movies.
Anderson:I’m from a family of coal miners,
so I’m fascinated by oppressive, underground
spaces. The idea of a building trying to kill
people comes from personal experience. Back in
the ’90s, I was on a writing team for a Granada
TV show calledEl C.I.D.and we’d gone to
interview a private eye in Spain for research. Our
producer bundled the writers into a lift, the
elevator cable snapped, the lights went out and
we just plummeted. One guy was halfway in,
halfway out of the elevator. He froze in fear and
was nearly chopped in half. When the lift hit the
springs at the bottom of the shaft we managed to
climb out. Our producer had taken the stairs, so
when he saw all his writers splayed on the loor,
I remember saying to him, “If you didn’t like our
work, you could’ve just ired us...” I laugh now
but it was super-chilling. The Hive and the laser
chamber both came from that experience.APOCALYPSE (2004)
THE CHURCH
In this sequel, Alice wakes up in
an empty Raccoon City hospital to find
the entire metropolis deserted. After
tooling up and then jacking a motorbike,
she ramraids a church to rescue
survivors being menaced by a trio of
mutant ‘Lickers’. One gets catapulted
into the rafters. The second is crushed
by a crucifix. The third receives a
shotgun lobotomy...Bolt: There are times I read Paul’s scripts and
think, “This is impossible...” The church
Licker ight was one of those. It took four
reads to take it in.
Anderson: That scene started with an
operatic image — a motorbike crashing
through a stained-glass window. Setting it
in a church underlined Alice’s rebirth as this
modern messiah igure: it’s a deliberate nod
to Charlton Heston in The Omega Man.
The Lickers are half-gecko, half-human,
the result of Umbrella’s genetic experiments.
I loved the idea of presenting them as
modern-day gargoyles.
Bolt: Because of the subject matter and
the pyrotechnics, even disused churches
wouldn’t allow us to shoot that scene.
So we built our own. We got that motorbike
smashing through the window on the
irst take.
Jovovich: If we can shoot something
practically, we’ll go for it. That bike was
on a rig and really did descend from the
ceiling, with me lying down on it. I’m always
up for doing my own stunts and wirework. I
start training two months before a Resi shoot
— it’s like Camp Evil. What I’m not a fan of
is driving heavy machinery. Anything involving
motorbikes terriies the life out of me.
Anderson: There was a lot more about the
Biblical interpretation of the apocalypse in
the script. The priest had a much bigger role,
but the guy playing him really sucked.
[Laughs] You see him being eaten: the rest of
him ended up on the cutting-room loor. As a
result of him being so bad, we decided we had
to up the acting stakes with the supporting
cast. Towards the end of production, we hired
Iain Glen to play Dr Isaacs, the face of the
Umbrella Corporation: he came in to kick
everyone up the backside. Got some acting
problems? Give it some Iain Glen!
Jovovich: That scene really shows off Alice’s
signature shooting skills. It’s one of the perks
of Resident Evil. I’m practically ambidextrous
now. I can shoot, twirl swords, even do the
hoovering with both hands.Colin Salmon as the
ill-fated James ‘One’
Shade, leader of the
Sanitation Team.